What people are saying on SnapChat issue:

What allegedly happened: An ex-employee of SnapChat said that ‘SnapChat CEO called India as a poor country.’

How it was interpreted: SnapChat CEO called India as poor.

How we responded: Ban SnapChat.

Mere allegation and unverified opinion is enough to be taken as truth, when ‘national pride’ mode is triggered. Despite the social media mob preying upon SnapChat and proving their patriotism by uninstalling the app, many have responded with sense, wit and humor.

“‪Gave 1 star and nasty review to Snapchat on the App Store. Feeling satisfied after doing my bit for the global poor and fragile Indian pride‬.”

“There are about 100 Indians managing whole wealth of India.So the rest of 99.9 percent is not rich and according to latest survey 60% don’t have toilet facility. So don’t live in a Harry Potter world.”
– Ozman Abdulla.

“Today the upper middle class has decided that India is NOT a poor country because someone apart from them has said it. It’s sheer irony that the same people who said that a career in India has no future are apparently ‘offended’ by a white guy saying the same.” – Pankaj Rai.

“Everyone is talking of uninstalling snapchat. Are they really interested in uninstalling poverty? Looks like the spanish are really happy.They haven’t any problem.”
– Ayush C Joy.

“One good thing will come out of all of this. Snapchat will now be full of only cool headed Indians who were not dumb enough to get offended by some allegation that has been put in place by an ex-employee. Good riddance, I’d say.”
– Tanya Rawat.

“I wish things like rain water harvestation, melting of glaciers, safety of women, unsafe working conditions of sanitation department workers, unequal pay, infiltration, intolerance, deforestation, littering public spaces etc. could also anger us the same way, get a rise in us the same way, make us act promptly the same way. And India is a poor country. Please ask your maid how she manages in a month. Jokes like making Pierce Brosnan do pan masala ads are just not funny. We have the most serious case of unequal wealth.”

– Madhvi Varma Chandra, Professor.

“Son of a bitch labeled india as poor? I’m gonna uninstall the app. That’ll show how rich we are.’ -A guy who waited hours in queues for a jio sim to get free Internet and calls.”
– Shloak Saxena

“A friend of mine stays in a mumbai suburb and is treasurer of the society he lives in. Last year he proposed to increase salary of building watchman (who had worked for 10 years, 12 hours a day) from 10K to 14.5K a month as he was good at his work and trusted by all. Society approved it.

After a few weeks, people from other societies reached out to my friend’s society and told them they shouldn’t spoil habits of all watchmen in area as everyone will expect more. They were forced by all to roll it back to lower salary.

One can stay wealthy by suppressing the poor and paying them less or become even more wealthy by paying them well and trigger consumption and growth in overall economy.

It baffles me on how millions get offended by some random guy calling our country poor but we get annoyed when our maid or drivers ask for salary raise.”

– Kunal Shah, Founder – FreeCharge.

“After 2 years of coming across 1000s of educated people via FB comments I am convinced that without compulsory training of cognitive biases and logical fallacies right from school days, we will have trouble developing as a nation.”
– Kunal Shah, Founder – FreeCharge.

“If a global CEO is accused of calling users of your country poor to expand its app base, you have two choices:
A) Get outraged at him and give poor ratings or delete his app.
B) Treat it as trigger to think about it, use the inherent smartness to research about per capita income of each nation versus your nation, start working towards improving per capita by own contribution.”

“Hate on social media spreads like a fire. People blindly follow anything, too quick.

Snapchat CEO was under the radar in the last two days for what was an allegation on him through a lawsuit, but hey, we Indians know only one “Snap” app… That is SNAPDEAL. So, what shall we do? Rate it on Play Store and be proud that we did our part in the movement.

That’s exactly what is wrong with us, the people on social media. No checking on the facts, what we need is media who is good at manipulation with headlines. And what we need is some free time to show what we can do.”

“We’re eager for a positive narrative about India, but we have to take responsibility for the state of the poor in the country. It’s easy to hate a white man who threatens our narrative of arriving on the global stage. But perhaps it’s time we started the harder work of thinking about how we can bring all Indians to that stage together.”